Virgin Islands police to blame in NJ man's unsolved murder?

James Malfetti, a 41-year-old New Jersey native, loved the
U.S. Virgin Island of St. John so much, he moved there. Roughly a year later, on January 19, 2014, he was found stabbed to death in his bed. Now, nearly a month has
passed since Malfetti’s body was found, no arrests have been made in the case
and a private investigator hired by the victim’s parents says shoddy police
work is to blame.

Malfetti, a tech consultant from Scotch Plains, was renting
a guest house on an estate overlooking the Caribbean waters that
surround the tropical island of St. John when the unimaginable happened the
night of January 17. That was the night the main home on the estate, occupied
by the property owners, was burglarized, Todd Phoenix, the private investigator
hired by the Malfetti family, told CBS News’ Crimesider Wednesday.

Phoenix says the property owners slept through the burglary
and police weren’t called until the next morning.

“Police came out to investigate the burglary and never went
to Jimmy’s house to check on him or anything of that nature,” Phoenix told
Crimesider. “…Jimmy’s house is in essence next door to the main residence –
literally 20 to 30 yards away.”

It wasn’t until the following morning, January 19, that
Malfetti’s body was found by the property owner and a land caretaker who went
to check on him, according to Phoenix.

“It was also a burglary – the screen on the south side of the
residence was broken, Jimmy’s iPhone was taken, his 46-inch T.V., and Jimmy had
been killed,” Phoenix said.

Phoenix attributed the lack of an arrest in the case to the
lack of a thorough investigation by the U.S. Virgin Islands Police Department (VIPD).

“There was no forensic processing at the scene of the
burglary, they never went to check on the other residents… they didn’t collect
the bloody sheets as evidence,” Phoenix told Crimesider of the lead
investigative agency on the case. “There’s a story to be told here about the
lack of safety and ineptness of local law enforcement.”

U.S. Sen. Robert Menendez, D-N.J., issued a letter Feb. 6 to FBI
Director James B. Comey asking for assistance in solving Malfetti’s case.

“After the unthinkable death of their son, the last thing
any parent needs is a hostile and uninterested law-enforcement response,”
Menendez said in a press release. “…Law-enforcement officers cannot promise a
successful investigation, but the family deserves a competent investigation.”

Menendez said in the letter to Dir. Comey he has been advised that police “discarded
forensic evidence, failed to collect potentially crucial evidence, incorrectly
stated the date of death on the death certificate, misstated facts to the
parents, and failed to check for fingerprints.”

He said Malfetti's parents reached out to police in the Virgin
Islands and were “rebuffed and told that if they continue to call their case
will be moved to the ‘bottom of the pile.’”

In a statement to Crimesider, Virgin Islands Police Commissioner Rodney Querrard said Wednesday the investigation into Malfetti's death is ongoing and that "the VIPD has taken all necessary steps from the day the victim was found, to process evidence at the crime scene..."

"A criminal investigation is a process and in some instances the process takes time to yield results," Querrard said.

Local FBI agents are assisting in the investigation, the Commissioner said.

According to a report in the Virgin Island Daily News, in
2012, there were 56 homicides recorded in the U.S. Virgin Islands, which has a
population of just over 105,000, solidifying its rank as one of the word’s
deadliest places on a per-capita basis.

The paper reports police in the territory failed to make
arrests in about two-thirds of homicides in 2011 and 2012.